Localization World Conference: Life Sciences Localization Core Competencies

Andres Heuberger, founder of ForeignExchange Translations, and Simon Andriesen, Managing Director of MediLingua, gave a well prepared overview of Life Sciences Localization Core Competencies as part of today's Localization World preconference sessions. Here are a few of the interesting points they made:

Demand for Life Sciences Translation
The duo pointed to a 2004 report by Capgemini and BGS that highlighted Life Science Companies' "Drastically Increasing" Need for Translation Services.

• 90% say need for translation services will increase during next 5 years
• 23% expect their need to increase drastically
• 80% indicated that international markets comprise at least 25% of their total company revenue, some as much as 50%
• Majority of respondents say translation is most critical for regulatory processes (65%) and marketing and training (35%)

When pressed hard for a rough guesstimate for the size of the life sciences translation market, the presenters said they imagine that a napkin-style calculation would represent approximately $1 billion of the total $15 billion language services market.

There are more barriers to entry in this market because of the relevant risks and high quality required. However, this life sciences translation industry is even more fragmented than the total translation industry as it is served by many small $5M-$10M companies.

Who, what, when, where, why, how...
Heuberger and Andriesen then spent most of the session giving a very clear overview of the basics:

• Market drivers
• Types of companies requiring life sciences translation
• Types of projects translated
• Basics for qualifying life science translators
• Life science industry-specific linguistic validation methods including in-country reviews, back translations, cognitive debriefings, and readability tests (Simon Andriesen also details these in an article he authored for the July/August 2009 issue of Multilingual Magazine, "Linguistic Validation Methods in Medical Translation")

It was time well spent for someone like me who has worked with companies providing translation for many industries, but never for a company with great expertise in life science translation. I'd love to share more details, but you'll just have to catch Heuberger and Andriesen at their next presentation on the subject.

Side note: you might also like to check out Heuberger and company's recently very popular Medical Translation Blog.

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